Which parts of MLism do you find lacking or outdated in the 21st century?
Which parts of MLism do you find lacking or outdated in the 21st century?
Spicy question maybe, but I'm interested in your takes.
Personally, I think there's some major issues with at least the terminology of the 2 phase model of lower/higher stage communism or socialism/communism as the terms are used in classical theory. Specifically the 'lower stage' or 'socialism' term is problematic.
In the age of revision and after the success of counterrevolution it has become clear that there is in fact a transitional phase leading up to the classical transitional phase. Societies did not jump from developed capitalism to socialism immediately and even the states that arguably did were forced to roll back some of the core tenets of 'socialism' as it is described in Marx, Engels and Lenin. Namely no private ownership of the means of production and no exploitation of man by man.
To ultras this just means countries following this path aren't socialist. So then China isn't, Cuba isn't, no country still is really and those of us claiming they are then have to be revisionists. And to be fair, if you're dogmatic you can make that point going from the source material. China itself recognizes this inconsistency, thus not seeing itself at the stage of socialism. Yet it's a socialist state. But then what do we actually mean by 'socialism' when we use the term like this? Just a dictatorship of the proletariat? Any country in the process of building socialism?
That question comes up all the time and confuses the fuck out of people, because the term is either not applied consistently or as it's defined is lacking. I think discourse in the communist movement and about AES would profit immensely if we had a more consistent definition or usage of the term or a better defined concept of what that transition to socialism is and how we should call it.
For me personally, and I don't know if it is ML per se, it would be the focus on (physical) workers and a lack of focus on office workers. My own party does this as well.
I get where it comes from, but to act as if a lot of people working whatever kind of job in an office are somehow less beneficial to our cause is a bit weird. I always think we are missing out on a lot of potential members.
I agree, I do think it is outdated there but I think it goes further than that and that it is a wedge to specifically dismantle class conflict. The idea that office workers are not proletariat is heavily ingrained and I believe a lot of this is on purpose to prevent any solidarity between manual labor and office workers.
There is a lot of dogma from past socialist experiments. And while the successes of the USSR should be defended, many MLs get carried away with the defense and act as if Lenin and Stalin were omnipotent and their theories on organizing and revolution are able to be perfectly replicated anywhere. We must ultimately remember that the USSR had many failures, had material conditions and obstacles unique to them, and that Lenin -- while a brilliant analyst of imperialism -- was a human, not a god, and that he wrote from a particular insight with the intent of revolutionizing his particular society.
That's not to say past theory should be discarded. We gotta continue to study and be the messengers of this knowledge. And it's also not to say we have license to be eclectic and undisciplined in our takes and our praxis. But even though history is currently rhyming and all that, we live in a notably different world in terms of our technology, collective awareness, We need to forge NEW theory suited to OUR material conditions. Especially for us comrades in imperial core countries. Take our cue from the rest of the global south and ADAPT the theory. Stop treating it like dogma.
One example in my maybe-unpopular opinion, is that we can actually learn from current anarchist tactics of organizing rather than wholly dismissing them because they are anarchists. Yeah I know, a lot of them (as evidenced here recently) are annoying in their lack of proper geopolitical analysis and their idealism, but they're also leading the struggle in plenty of areas of resistance (Cop City in Atlanta). We shouldn't take that for granted and we can learn from them just as much as they should learn from us. In this day and age, with the unique opportunities and setbacks we are confronted with regarding online surveillance and social media, strong centralization of our movement might actually not be appropriate right now.
I agree about working with anarchists. I heard a leftcom podcast a while ago on the piece “neither vertical nor horizontal” (they said it was “too Leninist” so I’ll stand by it) and combined with the one of piece from c/analyticalunity I have come to the conclusion that while MLs often just focus on having a strict organizational structure, recruiting, and protesting, Anarchists seem to be focused on only small scale praxis. They counter-protest, make community farms, and do mutual aid. We can learn from each other, and have less strict “vanguard party” structure (while staying more organized than the anarchists) and increase the help we give to our communities to grow support. Something the Sungmanitou said on Marx Madness that stuck out to me is that “if you collect member dues and don’t give out free food at least once a week you’re doing something wrong.”
Actually just be an human peeve rather than a theory one, but I feel like a lot of MLs haven't moved on from the fall of the Soviet Union and place disproportional emphasis on remembering a state that no longer exists compared to the support of current AES (except for China) and socialist movements. It's very rare to see any discussion of either Cuba or new socialist movements in America or Africa for instance, and when they pop up it's only when the Eye of the Washington Post sets its gaze upon them. In a sense, I think a lot of MLs (not educated enough to call myself one of them yet) fall a lot into the trap of talking about things libs care about more than what we should actually care about.
I believe that it is somewhat useful to focus on the USSR, since they had a lot of valuable praxis and theory which a Marxist should learn, but I agree that one should expand their knowledge to other countries of actually existing socialism, and even other non-imperialist (yet not communist) countries
Oh yeah, I don't think we should ever disregard the USSR and all the theory and practice from there, but right now they occupy a different space for me of "history" rather than "current events" and I think it'd be cool if we focused more on movements out there that may also be trying to put that theory and practice to use right now and we might not even be aware of.
or new socialist movements in America or Africa for instance
Out of curiosity, what new Socialist movements should we be paying attention to, in your opinion?
I'm a bit of a "baby Marxist" as some might call it and I wouldn't even dare to opine on African matters from my position of ignorance, but from my budding understanding there are some interesting struggles in the Caribbean happening right now that could use some attention. For instance, it has settled down a bit but the FRG9 in Haiti has some explicitly Marxist tendencies and advocates for a Haiti independent from foreign capitalist meddling and the expropriation of the bourgeois-owned land. Sadly it's hard to get info on them as the press pays little attention, many don't speak English, and them getting banned off of the popular social media like facebook or twitter. Also due to racism. So you often get a lot of "people talking about them" and no "them talking about themselves". Additionally Peru's Marxist-adjacent president is currently in jail after some really hard to parse political crisis. There are probably many more, and there may be many diverging opinions here about those, but those are the ones that came to mind. I'd say the Caribbean is really important geopolitically as uncontested US hegemony there could provide a even more hardship to Cuba.
I'd also love it if more people replied with their pet revolutionary movements, local or worldwide, or elaborating on the ones I mentioned if they know more about them.
Something that has been on my mind as I have been diving more into theory is what will happen to those that choose not to work "after the revolution."
I feel like at the time of Marx or Lenin, it was understood that manual labor war paramount to a productive society and the automation of the time made production more efficient with less manpower needed. But there was still this emphasis on how everyone will be a productive member of society in order to "earn their keep." The USSR, of course wasn't able to be 100% automated. So, I get that.
But we are in the early stages of an era of automation where there are going to be a lot less jobs needs that not everyone will be employed. But I also think that is a good thing. It's, imo, the obvious path our society needs to be striving for. Fewer people working, and less work needed due to fully or nearly fully automated systems of things like food or clothing. After all, we won't be striving for that infinite growth factor anymore.
The only thing I think I have seen that is close to an answer is that we will be working less so we will have more time to create. But that suggests that we will all still work but only, say 16 hours a week instead of 40-60. I think this definitely opens the opportunity for those that choose not to work, but do we call those people "parasites" and shun them? I don't think so. But I also don't know if this idea is fully realized in any text. At least not in any I've read yet.
Maybe this whole thing is just naturally lumped in with the old state "withering away"? Sorry for the sort of stream of thought comment btw.
Lafargue's "the right to be lazy" enlarges on this. I read it long time ago so don't remember his suggestion but the whole book is about your questions. Lafargue was Marx's son in law btw.
This sounds really good thanks! I got it pulled up in my phone and will grab an epub of it tonight for my e-reader.
From the wiki:
In the book Lafargue proposes the right to be lazy, in contrast to the right to work, which he deems bourgeois.
This definitely sounds like what I was wanting to explore. It's just been heavy on my mind and I was pretty hopeful someone had written about it.
I'm surprised I haven't heard of Lafargue before. Thanks for the rec.
I think there's a lot of difficulty in MLism discussing social relations that are relevant to revolution and reaction but aren't directly explicitly related to the means of production. Intersectionality does a good job of exposing those relations, but MLism struggles to incorporate these relations into a coherent framework that can easily be picked up.
Thus, we have confusion among MLs about how to express the division between the white labor aristocracy and the proles and lumpen of color. We have confusion about how to name oppressor and oppressed and discuss how oppression reproduces society. We struggle to incorporate the insights of Fanon and Freire without opening the door to revisionism. We do our best to do this, but MLism in my experience lacks the language and potential the concepts to handle these other relations gracefully.
If anyone has a good way of navigating what I am describing, I would be super grateful for some pointers.
As someone that just took class that utilized intersectionality as a framework, I heavily disagree. Intersectionality is confusing and lacking real foundational principles (i.e. it lacks a materialist perspective) that can interpret the world in real, actionable ways. It is basically like playing whack-a-mole, where each "intersection" requires its own individual investigation and understanding rather than belonging to an overarching understanding of the world. I interpret your critique as saying MLs generally lack a good understanding of class beyond Marx and Lenin (or maybe more generally, 19th and 20th century Europe) and how to incorporate decolonial ideas into class concepts, which I completely agree with. I am also part of the problem! But I don't think this is something that other MLs haven't analyzed. I think its a tendency of white labor aristocrats that are overrepresented in Western ML spaces (again, I am part of the problem). If anyone has good resources that bring class analysis into our modern world, I would also appreciate that!
I now realize I may be misinterpreting what you were saying about intersectionality, as I do think it is successful in at least bringing these topics into the forefront as worthy of serious analysis. I am just really frustrated with it right now since it caused me headaches lol
I think that's the point I'm making. Intersectionality and decolonialism have demonstrated that they are required for sustainable revolution, but MLism can't easily incorporate it.
I think various treatments of intersectionality fall to your critique, but I think perhaps your positions of privilege make intersectionality more difficult to feel the power of. There's a ton of power in understanding that storytelling is valid form of historical evidence. There's a ton of power in understanding that your privileges play a similar role to class interests in propagating and resisting ideologies and in determining aggregate behavior. It's critical to see this when you read Fanon and you realize that there exist both proletariat and slaves in the same global world system and that the proletariat depends on the exploitation of slaves in maintaining their ability to reproduce their lives, and that these concepts interpermeate and the lines are terribly blurry. When you look into colonial America and you see indentured servants that are white and sharecroppers that are black, it's insufficient to treat these two group identically due to ideology and superstructure. What do we call that using MLism? As far as I know, we can't call them separate classes because they have the same relations to the means of production, but they have different relations to each other and to the state and to the bourgeoisie.
We struggle to incorporate the insights of Fanon and Freire without opening the door to revisionism.
More like, if you suggest that maybe some white dude from a century ago didn’t have everything right and we should at least consider the perspective of contemporary theorists like Rodney or Fanon then you are labeled a revisionist.
I am not convinced that international class war should be practiced, especially in the modern era. The reality is that countries where a socialist revolution succeeds will most likely be economically malnourished; so, instead of publicly waging class war on nearly every country in the world and letting yourself be isolated and slowly asphyxiated, it's better to work with these nations to some extent and acquire the appropriate technological know-how and other means of production. Proletarian internationalism, in the form of making donations to people-centric governments or sending rescue teams after some natural disaster, is acceptable; however, military alliances and other burdening constraints based on ideology should be avoided at all costs.
As for China, I would say that it's socialist because of instead sharpening the contradictions between capital and labour as what is occurring in countries, like the US, the Chinese state is resolving them to their logical conclusions. The most important aspect of this is preventing the move from the real economy of industrial production and consumption to the fictitious financial economy, like what exists in the US. For example, the de-industrialization of the US primarily occurred because of the antagonism between decreasing amount of profit and rising wages, but this is not what is occurring in China. Instead of exporting all low-value manufacturing to poorer nations so monopolies can make even more profit, the Chinese central government is automating that level of manufacturing and taking away the privileges that the domestic industrialists have enjoyed so far; thus, we can see that the primary internal contradictions are slowly being resolved, and that China is increasingly heading into the type of classless and harmonious society that was described by Marx and Engels.
By failed “international class war” do you mean like establishing an international and trying to do a global strike? I think most people have abandoned that strategy besides maybe WWP. As for China being socialist, even they don’t claim they are. I’d describe them as a mixed economy under a proletarian government. I’m not sure why you suggest a socialist country would try to sharpen contradictions. As I’m currently reading ‘The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People‘ it appears to me that the CPC is treating the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie internally as contradictions among the people, as they already have state power.
By failed “international class war” do you mean like establishing an international and trying to do a global strike?
The rest of the first paragraph after the first sentence clarifies what I mean.
As for China being socialist, even they don’t claim they are.
The constitution of the Communist Party of China disagrees with that statement. http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/CHINA_209163/TopStories_209189/10195159.html
"The Communist Party of China is the vanguard of the Chinese working class, the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation. It is the leadership core for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and represents the developmental demands of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation for China's advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the greatest possible majority of the Chinese people. The Party's highest ideal and ultimate goal is the realization of communism.
The Communist Party of China uses Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as its guides to action."
As I’m currently reading ‘The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People‘ it appears to me that the CPC is treating the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie internally as contradictions among the people, as they already have state power.
Yes, I apologize for sounding confusing. What I meant was pretty much exactly what you said: the Chinese working classes are in possession of state power and are using it to resolve the internal contradictions in their society by taking them to their logical conclusions rather than arbitrarily lengthening them, as what has occurred in the US.
"Instead of exporting all low-value manufacturing to poorer nations so monopolies can make even more profit, the Chinese central government is automating that level of manufacturing and taking away the privileges that the domestic industrialists have enjoyed so far; thus, we can see that the primary internal contradictions are slowly being resolved, and that China is increasingly heading into the type of classless and harmonious society that was described by Marx and Engels."